It was a rainy Friday
night in Glasgow. After the conference
ended we said our good-byes and hurried home to get changed for the conference
dinner. It had been several years since
I last wore my kilt, so it took me a while to sort out all the different bits;
as a result we didn’t call the taxi until quarter to seven. Bad idea!
It took almost exactly 45 minutes for the taxi to arrive. Lorna had warned the staff at the Kelvingrove
Museum that I was running late, so they were waiting for us just inside the
backdoor to the place as we arrived. We
rushed in and upstairs, my not-fully-broken-in ghillie brogues clacking on the
stone flagging. I felt rather foolish
and embarrassed for being so
late to arrive at what was in effect my own party, and also for having
forgotten an essential fact about taxi travel in Glasgow in busy Friday nights. Lorna met us on the stairs, to direct us to
our table. Fortunately, she had held
down the fort in my absence, done a welcome speech, and told the venue to start
the dinner service.
The large atrium of
the Kelvingrove Museum was full
of tables, and the tables were full of most of the attendees of the Third
Conference of the International Society for Emotion-Focused Therapy (ISEFT),
finishing off their starter courses. Suddenly the room erupted in cheers. It was overwhelming. It turned out later that many of them had
somehow gotten the impression that I had taken ill, so the whole thing had
become a kind of drama.
There was then nothing
for it but for me to clack up onto the stage and make up my own welcome speech
on the spot, which was enthusiastically received.
* * *
It had been an intense
and exhausting week: Tuesday and Wednesday there was the ISEFT Trainer Meeting,
at Renfield-St. Stephen’s Centre here in Glasgow. In attendance were 100 EFT trainers,
institute heads and facilitators. We
spent a very fruitful two days exploring key issues in EFT training, with a
particular focus on training in interpersonal processes such as empathy and work with
interpersonal difficulties. The Tuesday evening social programme featured the
now-traditional Trainer Dinner, which we held at the Scottish Piping Centre.
This was followed by
the two-day main ISEFT conference, at the University of Strathclyde’s shiny new
Technological Innovation Centre (TIC).
There were 235 attendees from throughout the world: the UK, Europe,
North America, the Middle East, East Asia, Australia and South America. This
time we were able to offer three plenary sessions and five parallel
tracks.
At the end of Day 1
the attendees were treated to a civic drinks reception at Glasgow City Chambers
(=City Hall) which faces onto George Square and is an ornate Victorian building
featuring a marvellous marble staircase and a large reception hall with
impressive murals depicting key episodes from the history of Glasgow. The Deputy Lord Provost (=vice mayor) of Glasgow
was there to give a welcome speech in which he charmed the
conferees with classic Glaswegian humour and warmth.
Both Trainer Meeting
and ISEFT Main Conference were a great success, with presentations that were
both highly relevant to practice and also cutting edge developments within EFT.
Both trainer meeting and main conference were able to combine research, theory
and practice in ways that felt useful and well-grounded empirically and
theoretically. The experience was exciting and uplifting. There has been a noticeable step change since
the first ISEFT conference in
Veldhoven four years ago, with promising new research appearing or in
progress. The overall effect was highly
stimulating and inspiring, as we were told repeatedly by the attendees.
* * *
Finishing my belated
welcome speech, we sat down to eat our starters, which the kitchen had kept
warm for us. Part of the Turkish EFT
delegation was at our table, as well as part of the Strathclyde contingent. The
atrium echoed with the voices of our EFT friends and colleagues from all over
the world. Between courses, I got up and
wandered over to Les’s table, which provoked one of a series of picture-taking
episodes.
I took several groups
of folks around to some of my favourite things in the museum: Dali’s Christ of
St John of the Cross, the Scottish 20th century painters, the French
impressionists. Later, as the ceilidh
band set up, Les and I had a wee ramble through an eclectic series of galleries
(such as Scottish pre-history, armour & weapons). We reflected on the strange, unpredictable
paths that life can lead us into. Then
the band started up, and the dancing commenced. The earlier emotions of anxiety
(what would go wrong?), sadness (at ending and too soon
parting) and embarrassment (at being late and various minor gaffes) were
gone, and in their place was pride (about the achievement), gratitude
(at the good things that had taken place), hope (for the future of EFT), love
(for a great group of good people whom I know, respect and care about).
Onward to the next
ISEFT conference: Chicago 2021!
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